Chappell v. Rich

• Decision Date: 11 August 2003
• Docket Number: No. 02-10200.,02-10200.
• Citation: 340 F.3d 1279
• Parties: Shelton CHAPPELL, Martha Bolden, Ruthie Montero, Jackie Williams, Paula Burns, all individually and as Personal Representatives of the Estate of Johnnie Mae Chappell, Alonzo Chappell, Ernest Chappell, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. J.W. RICH, Wayne M. Chessman, Elmer Kato, James Alex Davis, all individually, Nathaniel Glover, Sheriff of Duval County, Florida as successor to Dale Carson, Dale Carson, as former Sheriff of Duval County, Florida, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

340 F.3d 1279

Shelton CHAPPELL, Martha Bolden, Ruthie Montero, Jackie Williams, Paula Burns, all individually and as Personal Representatives of the Estate of Johnnie Mae Chappell, Alonzo Chappell, Ernest Chappell, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. J.W. RICH, Wayne M. Chessman, Elmer Kato, James Alex Davis, all individually, Nathaniel Glover, Sheriff of Duval County, Florida as successor to Dale Carson, Dale Carson, as former Sheriff of Duval County, Florida, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 02-10200.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Decided: August 11, 2003.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

M. Forest Hutchinson, III, Gregory Wayne Lineberry, William T. Lassiter, Jr., Lassiter & Sessions, D. Gray Thomas, William J. Sheppard, Sheppard, White & Thomas, P.A., Jacksonville, FL, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Scott Douglas Makar, Asst. Gen. Counsel, App. and Local Government Law Div., Jacksonville, FL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before BARKETT, MARCUS and ALARCON^*, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

The adult children of Johnnie Mae Chappell ("Chappell children") appeal the district court's dismissal of their complaint asserting constitutional claims under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985. They contend that their cause of action for denial of access to the courts is not time-barred and that their complaint alleges facts sufficient to state a claim.

According to the complaint, Johnnie Mae Chappell, an African-American woman, was shot and killed on March 23, 1964, by four white men during a drive-by shooting in a period of racial unrest in Jacksonville, Florida. Following an investigation at the crime scene, no action was taken by the Duval County Sheriff's Office until about August 10, 1964, when two detectives in the Sheriff's Office inadvertently obtained a confession, as well as the murder weapon, from one of the four men while investigating another case. Unable to find any detectives working on the Chappell case, the two detectives, C. Lee Cody and Donald R. Coleman, searched for the investigative file, discovering it underneath the desk chair floor pad in Chief of Detectives J.C. Patrick's office. Detectives Cody and Coleman brought the matter to the attention of Sheriff Dale Carson, who assured them he would look into it. Shortly thereafter, Chief Patrick removed Detectives Cody and Coleman from the Chappell murder investigation, and they were reassigned.

In September 1964, J.W. Rich, Elmer Kato, Wayne Chessman, and James Alex Davis were indicted for Mrs. Chappell's murder. Rich was tried separately and convicted of manslaughter. The state then moved for entry of nolle prosequi for Kato, Chessman, and Davis, citing insufficient evidence for trial.

On March 23, 1996, former detective Cody informed members of the Chappell family for the first time about the alleged interference by the Sheriff's Office in the Chappell investigation. The Chappell children filed their complaint on March 23, 2000 against the former and current Sheriffs of Duval County and the four men arrested in connection with their mother's death, alleging deprivation of their civil rights solely because of their race in violation of 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983, 1985(2) and (3), and 1986. They alleged that the Sheriff's Office obstructed legitimate efforts to investigate Mrs. Chappell's death and conspired with the four criminal defendants to misplace and tamper with evidence, thereby depriving them of, among other things, their right of access to the courts to assert a wrongful death claim. Their ability to assert their claims was prejudiced, they alleged, because they were unaware that the Defendants had tampered with evidence, removed Detectives Cody and Coleman from the investigation, failed to investigate actively Mrs. Chappell's murder, failed to perform ballistics tests on the weapon recovered by the detectives, and failed to enter the murder weapon into evidence at Rich's trial. They also alleged that the conspiracy was ongoing, evidenced in part by the fact that neither the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office nor the State Attorney's Office has a file on the Chappell case and that no transcripts of the proceedings have been preserved.¹

The district court granted the Defendants' motion to dismiss, determining that the Chappell children had failed to state a claim under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985 because they could not establish that they had been denied access to the courts. It noted that the Chappell children knew the identity of the four criminal defendants in 1964 and that no act of the Sheriff's Office interfered with their ability to bring a wrongful death claim against those criminal defendants at that time. In addition, the district court found that the statute of limitations barred the Chappell children's claims, because they knew or should have known of those claims and of their injuries within four years of Mrs. Chappell's death. Moreover, the district court concluded that the section 1985 claims against the Sheriff's Office failed under the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine.

On appeal, the Chappell children contend first that their cause of action for denial of access to the courts accrued not in 1964 but on March 23, 1996, when Detective Cody first informed them that the Sheriff had hidden the investigative file on their mother's murder. In addition, they argue that the district court erred in finding that they failed to state a claim under sections 1983 and 1985. Finally, they argue that their allegations of a conspiracy between the four private individuals and the members of the Duval County Sheriff's Office defeat the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine.

We review the dismissal of a complaint for failure to state a claim de novo, applying the same standard as the district court. Lotierzo v. Woman's World Med. Ctr., Inc., 278 F.3d 1180, 1182 (11th Cir. 2002). We must accept the allegations set forth in the complaint as true for the purposes of a motion to dismiss. Id.

DISCUSSION

Access to the courts is clearly a constitutional right, grounded in the First Amendment, the Article IV Privileges and Immunities Clause, the Fifth Amendment, and/or the Fourteenth Amendment. Christopher v. Harbury, 536 U.S. 403, 415 n. 12, 122 S.Ct. 2179, 153 L.Ed.2d 413 (2002) (noting the Supreme Court's past reliance on all of these bases); see also Bank of Jackson County v. Cherry, 980 F.2d 1362, 1370 (11th Cir.1993) (grounding the right of access to courts in the First Amendment). To pass constitutional muster, access to the courts must be more than merely formal; it must also be adequate, effective, and meaningful. Ryland v. Shapiro, 708 F.2d 967, 972 (5th Cir. 1983) (citing Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 822, 97 S.Ct. 1491, 52 L.Ed.2d 72 (1977)). In Bell v. Milwaukee, the Seventh Circuit observed that to deny access to the courts,

defendants need not literally bar the courthouse door or attack plaintiffs' witnesses. This constitutional right is lost where, as here, police officials shield from the public and the victim's family key facts which would form the basis of the family's claims for redress. A contrary interpretation of the right to due process would encourage police officials to conceal the circumstances relating to unlawful killings committed under color of state law and other deprivations of federal rights which Section 1983 was designed to remedy.

746 F.2d 1205, 1261 (7th Cir.1984). Thus, interference with the right of court access by state agents who intentionally conceal the true facts about a crime may be actionable as a deprivation of constitutional rights under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985. See Flores v. Satz, 137 F.3d 1275, 1278 n. 7 (11th Cir.1998) (distinguishing between officials who intentionally conceal facts and those who fail to investigate fully); Ryland, 708 F.2d at 973 (allegation "that agents of the state intentionally engaged in conduct that interfered with [the plaintiffs'] exercise of their constitutionally protected right to institute a wrongful death suit" offered a valid theory of recovery).

Florida's...